Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who looks at shapes similarly to Albert Renger-Patzch. His work, especially his book “122 Colour Photographs” brought modernism to Danish photography and earned him a grant for a years study at the Art Institute of Chicago. He looks at the natural shapes and pattern in the world around us and creates something attention-grabbing out of it. A lot of the work he did was high-contrast and this below I have created some work in his style.
The Process
I edited the image in the style of Helmer-Petersen by firstly choosing the threshold option on photoshop.
I then edited the white and black balance using the slider to create my ideal image.
I then cropped the image to produce a square so that I could present my images in one sheet.
I looked at inverting the image to create something new but i decided not to.
I then put all four images into one page to showcase them.
I think this photo expresses Frank Hallam-Day’s theme of passage of time on works of man well. He highlights the bright colour yellow and also the brown to emphasise the weathering of the ship hull. He contrasts the work of man (ship hull) with nature (water) to express the affect nature has. The photo is split into the rule of thirds horizontally and one line vertically, creating a grid shape to show the sections within the photo of different patterns like weathering and rusting. The middle section has different levels of rust from where the sea has been, expressing that the ship hulls where once technological achievements but are now just sitting in the harbour. He contrasts the bottom of the photo with the top half, the bottom half having a lot of marks and patterns, and the top being one bold colour. The marks on the ship hull create interesting reflections on the sea and he has increased saturation to emphasise the rust in the reflection.
The bokeh effect refers to blur or a blurry quality, and in photography it is a very recognizable technique. The word bokeh translates from Japanese as ‘blur’.
Bokeh tends to appear in the areas of an image that remain outside the focal region. Because of this the most common technique used to add it is a shallow depth of field created through a wide open aperture. It is generally considered pleasing for your eyes and your perception of a photograph, because it can add softness to an otherwise harshly lit photograph.
This website shows the different types of bokeh effects that can be achieved:
The black and white emphasises the different races and the repetition of the physical bar standing between the people, and the rest of the bus, shows the segregation and categorises them individually. The photograph demonstrates the rule of third as it has vertical and horizontal lines. It also shows signs of Ansel Adams zone system, the brightest point being the white bars.
Conceptual
The idea that America in the 1920s wasn’t a great life for everyone , and racism was a apart of everyday life, revealing the cruel reality of the ‘American Dream’.
Technical
The photo has natural daylight as Robert Frank was a documentary photographer. The photo was taken on the streets so has no artificial lighting. He used a fast shutter speed as the photo is very sharp and not blurred so if the bus was moving at the time he captured all the detail.
Contextual
The 1920’s was a time of racism and prejudice and it was uncommon for photographers to tackle the issue of racism at the time.
I have taken inspiration from Keld Helmer Peterson and edited my photos in photoshop, using the threshold effect to achieve a similar appearance.
I cropped the photos and altered the threshold levels to get the effect I wanted. I put the edited photos in a square shape to show my work as whole.
I think these photos work well in a grid format as the threshold effect shows the different textures of water. Having the images together emphasises the contrast from white to black and because the photos only have two colours it makes them more powerful.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who used the technique of thresholding in his photography.
At the start of his career, his aim was to make pictures that would only work in colour, and not in black and white. When he began focusing on architectural photography, he then used the black and white effect .
The simplest thresholding methods replace each pixel in an image with a black pixel if the image intensity is less than some fixed constant or a white pixel if the image intensity is greater than that constant.
This photo is from Keld Helmer-Peterson’s black and white photography where he looks at threshold. The photo at first glance does not look like a photo of telephone wires and could be mistaken as a drawing because of the bold solid colours displayed. He removed all mid tones so the contrast from white to black emphasises the thin lines as well as the bolder ones and also the different shapes in the photo. Because the photo only contains two colours, with no varied tones, it create a bold and striking appearance that couldn’t be achieved with mid tones.
Keld Helmer-Petersen (20 August 1920 – 6 March 2013) was a Danish photographer who achieved his international breakthrough in 1948 when he published 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs, a collection of experiments with shapes inspired by Albert Renger Patzsch. Keld Helmer-Petersen’s 122 Farvefotografier was published in 1948, it is a photobook of great singularity. The book gained an idea of just how unusual it was to use color for art photographs at that time. However, as well as Helmer-Petersen’s innotive work in colour photogrpahy he also has explored some creative and abstract black and white photography.
Inspired by his work I used Photoshop to re-create photos similar to his black and white ones. I used the threshold tool to create a similar look and then adjusted the slider to add more or less black and whites.
These are the unedited images I used to create my work influenced by Helmer Petersen.
Helmer-Peterson produced large bodies of work in which he presented his images as the black and white extremities of the tones of his subject. This gave his work a bold and considerably minimalist style. Many of his subjects were based around a theme of industrialisation and architecture. The lack of any tones between black and white mean that the viewer is able to quickly interpret what the image is putting forwards without any unnecessary distraction.
Helmer-Petersen Exhibition
My Response To Helmer-Petersen’s work
I produced this response simply in Photoshop using the threshold tool and adjusting it to a point where i believed it looked as aesthetically pleasing as possible. Then compiling the 4 edited images into 1 document in which the compliment one another.
Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who looks at shapes similarly to Albert Renger-Patzch. His work, especially his book “122 Colour Photographs” brought modernism to Danish photography and earned him a grant for a years study at the Art Institute of Chicago. He looks at the natural shapes and pattern in the world around us and creates something attention-grabbing out of it. A lot of the work he did was high-contrast and this below I have created some work in his style.
Image Analysis:
